Saturday, July 23, 2016

Trump bump

We've spent some time looking at the bizarrely skewed Reuters-Ipsos general election polling that has, over the last couple of months, included survey samples that are often more than 50% self-identified Democrats, about one-third Republican, and the residual being independents or third-party backers.

The latest R-I poll is a staggering 56% Democrat, 39% Republican, and 5% other. Despite an almost 20 point advantage in partisan affiliation, though, Hillary is beating Trump by just a hair, 41%-38%. In this latest iteration, which runs from July 18-22, Trump is getting 9% of Democrat support while Hillary is getting 8% of Republican support.

The last time Trump was this close to Hillary in R-I the sample was much more evenly distributed by partisan affiliation, at 45% Democrat and 42% Republican. If current polling included the same partisan distribution now as it did back in May it would show Trump crushing Hillary by something like 43%-32%.

Caveats about convention bounces should be taken into account, of course. That said, things are looking good for the Trump train.

18 comments:

Trump is now performing better in FiveThirtyEight's polls-only model than Mitt Romney did... at any point during his loser campaign. Shows alienating Cruzlims is not always a ticket to disaster if pretty much every Cruzlim is in a safe Republican state.

The last time Clinton's and Trump's Gallup favorability ratings were this close (four points apart), they were tied in RCP's polling average.

USC has a daily tracking poll that is sponsored by LA Times. According to RCP, USC's latest 5-day moving average ending on 7/23, has Trump +3.

Quinnipiac and PPP will release their latest national polls at the end of the month. Their last national polls were released at the end of June. They seem to use more reasonable sampling (Dems +6) than the mainstream media. The trend so far from June to July has been a 5-8 point swing for Trump.

With the Tim Kaine VP pick, and now DNCLeak scandal, it seems reasonable to bet that a decent number of Bernie Sanders supporters will not be voting for Hillary. Even before, I recall about 40-50% of his supporters indicating in polls that they would not vote for her. Given that 14 million people voted for him in the Democratic primary, losing about 6-7 million potential voters, even if they just stay home and don't vote, is huge.

My theory all along has been that Hillary has a ceiling in the mid-40's assuming a plausible alternative. They seem to know this as they are instructing the media to call Trump "dark and dangerous." The hope is it sways enough of those undecided to say "the devil I know is better than the devil I don't know."

This strategy can work, but it only works when the other candidate cooperates. Despite the shrieking from Conservative Inc, Trump has not said anything most people find outlandish. His big speech went a long way towards convincing the skeptics he can be trusted. Women I know loved his speech, even the liberal ones. That's something to watch, I suspect.

My hunch is we begin to see a cascading effect. The better his polls, the better they get. We saw this in the primary. Remember how the experts said his ceiling was 10%? Then it was 15% and then 25% and so on. As he did better, his polling got better and he kpet breaking through these barriers.

Silver is such a dope for rolling out his statistical model for the general election with the headline "Trump has 20% chance to win in November". It was immediately obvious that prior to the rollout, back in May, the model would've predicted things to be much tighter, and now, in only July, the model shows Trump with more than a 40% chance of winning.

Cicatrizatic/Anon,

PPP and Quinnipiac are the polls to watch. If they show Trump up ~5 points then R-I hasn't shifted its modeling from June. Instead, the curve has really moved 8 points in Trump's favor. If they continue to show a statistical tie, then R-I may have changed something.

Z,

Right. Scott Adams realized this awhile ago, and predicted that having landed on the dark-and-dangerous identifier, Hillary's poll numbers would improve, which they did.

He added the caveat that they would improve until Trump found a way to counter it, that is. And he has--by simply presenting himself as firm, competent, and statesmen-like. By building him up to be some unhinged mudslinging firebrand, all he had to do for his most salient, concentrated viewing to date--his RNC speech--was not be any of those things and suddenly crooked Hillary looks like she's misrepresenting things yet again.

Monmouth polled Hillary supporters on the impact of the Tim Kaine pick on Hillary's support:

9% more likely to support13% less likely to support68% no impact10% no opinion

This is unlike the Pence pick, which yielded 20% more likely to support Trump / 10% less likely to support. Pence seemed likely a sleepy pick, but having a 2 to 1 ratio of more likely to support versus less likely is pretty rare for a VP pick.

And events are trending towards wide spread Muslim terrorism in White majority media areas in Europe and the USA plus the turning of the BLM incitement campaign against cops into urban guerilla warfare.

“Support for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump ticked up across battleground states following the Republican National Convention last week, according to the new CBS News Battleground Tracker Poll.

Trump now has 42 percent support across the 11 battleground states surveyed — up from the 40 percent he had last week before the convention. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has 41 percent support, unchanged from last week’s poll.

According to the poll, 55 percent of Republicans said Trump’s message at the convention made them feel hopeful, and about 40 percent said it made them feel enthusiastic.

In addition to the national polls, there is a new Ohio PPP poll out today:

Trump 42, Clinton 39, Johnson 6, Stein 2

Their Ohio poll in June had Clinton +4

Here is their narrative:

"The tightening of the race has come completely thanks to Trump consolidating his support among Republican voters. Where he had only a 66/15 advantage with them in June, he's now ahead 82/9. Clinton's actually seen some consolidation with her base as well, going from a 76/13 lead with Democrats last time to now 84/11. Independents have remained completely steady- Clinton was up 39/38 with them in June, and she's up 41/40 with them now. Trump's 'bump' is the normal unification of his party base following its convention."

Given that the Clinton consolidation has already occurred, and with the outrage among Bernie supporters in light of the DNCLeak scandal, it doesn't seem likely that Clinton will have quite the same convention bump that Trump has. The dynamics seem to be totally different. No one is waiting on Hillary to give a speech to see if she is a serious candidate or not. I think she'll get some bump in the polls, but I highly doubt it will be a 7 point swing like Trump.

Heh, I've already underestimated the amount of chaos the DNCLeaks scandal would cause, and I've also underestimated the tenacity of the Sanders' delegates. He's a pussy but his hardcore supporters are not!

I am a bit mystified by the R-I performance over the past year. During the Republican campaign starting in late 2015 and continuing into 2016, R-I correctly showed Trump running much higher than other polls. But once Trump nailed down the Republican nomination, it seems R-I is showing Trump running against Hillary behind other polls. The reason for my mystification is that Nate Silver rated R-I relatively high among the 20 or so polls he was following in 2012 (5th or 6th comes to mind, relying on memory). Either R-I is right, which I doubt, or something is going on here which raises questions about R-I's integrity.